Tuesday

DESTIN, Fla. — The College Football Playoff is entering the sixth year of a 12-year contract that runs through the 2025 season.

Kirby Smart is leading the charge for Georgia to be in position to be able to lean on as tough a schedule as anyone as it chases playoff spots and national titles.

“I just think that’s the way football’s headed,” the Bulldogs coach said Tuesday as the Southeastern Conference opened four days of spring meetings. “I’ll be honest with you, I think the day of playing more competitive games, there’s more parity in our conference. I think going out and playing tougher opponents is a good thing.”

If and when the playoff expands from its current four-team format — and Georgia athletic director Greg McGarity said, “We feel like there’s a strong possibility to expand to eight,” — the Bulldogs have already lined up marquee program after marquee program.

Home-and-home series with Oklahoma, Texas, Clemson, Florida State and UCLA dots Georgia's schedule stretching from 2023 to 2033.

The SEC programs represented by the other 13 coaches in the league haven’t taken that big leap forward just yet.

“Some coaches will look at me and say you’re crazy for doing it,” Smart told fans in Augusta last week. “I think it’s the day and age is coming. People want those kind of games and that kind of atmosphere.”

South Carolina coach Will Muschamp coaches a program that has been to one SEC championship game in its history and annually plays Clemson, which has won two of the last three national titles.

“You have to be realistic about where you are and the schedule you are going to have each year,” Muschamp said. “The hard part about scheduling each year is you’re going out six, eight, 10 years to schedule some of these games and you don’t know where your program is going to be or who you’re playing is going to be at the time.”

Georgia has at least two nonconference Power Five opponents (one the annual rivalry matchup with Georgia Tech) each season through 2033 except 2021.

Smart wants three Power Five nonconference games a year and has it already in 2028 with Texas, Florida State and Georgia Tech and 2029 with Texas, Clemson and Georgia Tech.

Only Florida and South Carolina in the SEC have more than one Power Five conference opponent in future schedules, according to fbschedules.com.

“Goal is to have at least 10 power 5 opponents each year,” Florida athletic director Scott Stricklin tweeted to a fan referring to the eight-game SEC schedule and at least two other Power Five opponents.

Florida will play Florida State and a home-and-home series with either Texas or Colorado from 2028 through 2031. That’s noteworthy in itself because the Gators last left the Sunshine State for a nonconference regular-season game in 1991.

South Carolina plays North Carolina and annual rival Clemson this year and in 2023.

“I think it’s the best thing for the game,” Smart said. “If you look at dwindling attendance, the opportunity to go recruit, to play on a big stage.”

Alabama is the only team to make all five playoffs. It’s done it with playing a Power Five conference opponent to start the season at a neutral site, but that’s the only Power Five non-SEC opponent it has scheduled those seasons and it hasn’t kept the Tide out yet.

Alabama has now scheduled home-and-home series with Texas, Notre Dame, West Virginia and Oklahoma starting in 2022 and is filling in other years with neutral-site games.

The home-and-home games, Crimson Tide coach Nick Saban said, will make it easier for fans who have been asked to travel for an opener, SEC title game and two playoff games.

“It’s really kind of hard on your fans,” Saban said. “I think the dynamic of those games sort of changed a little bit for us.”

Future in Jacksonville

One of Georgia’s biggest games is played on a big stage annually in Jacksonville against Florida, but Smart reiterated what he said last fall that he’s open to moving the game. So is Florida coach Dan Mullen.

Smart said on his radio show in October he had “mixed feelings” of playing at the neutral site because of giving up a home game in recruiting.

The tradition of a game that has been played in Jacksonville since 1933 — except for two years due to stadium renovations — as well as Georgia getting about $2 million more over two years than it would for a home-and-home series are reasons the game would be hard to move.

“I think that’s always up for discussion,” Smart said Tuesday of playing the game on campus. “We have a contract with Jacksonville that’s a couple of years out (through the 2021 game). I think you’re always looking to see what you can do to develop your program and get better. Nothing’s off the table, but nothing’s been decided, either.”

Nothing has been decided yet when it comes to the playoff.

The Big Ten has been shut out of the playoffs the last two years, and the Pac-12 has missed out on the playoff in three of the five years. If those trends continue, the clamor for expansion would only grow.

Still, Pac-12 commissioner Larry Scott told oregonlive.com, “There’s no moment to where it’s a given that anything is going to change until we get to the end of the contract.”

If it did, Georgia believes it’s well-positioned.

“Let’s just say it’s eight teams, there’s going to be a lot of people scrambling for big games and some of these schools just aren’t going to be available,” McGarity said.

SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said over the weekend that he expects talk about expanding the playoff, but told The Associated Press that the current four-team system "works well and can continue to work well."

Smart treaded carefully with the expanded playoff talk.

“People have misstated that I believe that it’s going to go to this,” he said. “I have no clue. I am a company man along with the SEC that what we have works. I’m not forecasting this. What I am forecasting is we’re going to have a strength of schedule that’s going to allow us one, two, three, four, eight teams to be one of the teams in the conversation because of who we play.”

He said “naysayers” think an extra loss could be costly.

“My argument is the men in that room, the women in that room that are on that committee are going to have to balance somebody that goes out and plays three nonconference Power Five teams,” he said. “We felt strongly it was important to do it."

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